Page 23 of Single Malt

While traveling kept me from being able to make a specific schedule for this sort of thing, I did try to make the rounds to talk to my employees at least once a month. It was getting harder and harder to do, though, as my business grew. If I was able to get into all of the universities I was pitching to, I would probably need to open an entire second distillery or move to a much bigger one here.

Something else Adela and I were going to talk about this year.

“Good to see you, Heath,” I said to the first man. “How were your holidays?”

“Great, Mr. McCrae.” He enthusiastically shook my hand. “We went to see my folks in Colorado, did some skiing.”

“No broken legs?”

Heath shook his head. “Just a few bruised backsides.”

“Glad you had a good time with family.” I shook his outstretched hand again. “Have a good rest of your day.”

“I will, Mr. McCrae.”

The next man wasn’t a handshake kind of guy, so I just went straight to ask how his holidays had been. Adela followed along, sometimes joining in the conversation, but mostly just going with me. I could’ve had her remind me of who each person was and tell me something about them, but I was still able to get them all on my own.

That might change with expansion, but I’d do my best as long as I could. Even if I hired someone to take over more of the day-to-day business, I never wanted to be the boss no one saw, the one who knew nothing about his people.

Shannon’s was family, and I intended to work my ass off to keep it that way.

Fifteen

Freedom

“Dammit!”

The curse slipped out before I could stop it, but my finger throbbed badly enough that I didn’t care if someone heard me. I glared at the hammer as if the tool itself was responsible for my clumsiness. In my defense, I’d rarely had the need to use a hammer, and the one I had in the apartment for whatever hammer emergencies happened to come up was much smaller than this one.

Perhaps I should make a note to bring up the subject to a member of the maintenance crew. Surely, they weren’t all comfortable with this monstrosity. And if they were, I supposed it didn’t really matter as I didn’t plan to find myself in similar circumstances at any point in the near future. My final January at Stanford was almost over. Unless, of course, I decided against–

Stop.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. I needed to focus on the task at hand. I repeated the breathing exercise four more times and then opened my eyes. No more distractions. No more bunny trails.

I was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student in a promising field with myriad opportunities ahead of me. My mind needed to calm the fuck down and stay on task.

First thing: fix the damn shelf.

The nail remained a half-inch out, mocking me, but it wouldn’t be doing that for long. I put my left hand in a different place than it had been the last time I’d swung. My balance wasn’t quite as good, but at least I wouldn’t hit my finger if the head of the hammer slid off the nail like it had before. I also wasn’t going to be stupid enough to swing like I had before. No moreKarate Kidattempts.

A minute later, the nail was in place, the shelf was secure, and I took a moment to examine my finger. It still hurt, but I didn’t see any marks on it. Fortunately, I’d decided to forgo a manicure just in case something happened to chip my polish or a nail prior to the event. My fingernails being bare would be far better than a chip I couldn’t fix.

“Ms. Mercier?”

Isabelle Killroy was the representative from the distributor I’d used for the wine, even though she barely looked old enough to buy it. Every other time I’d seen her, she’d been smiling, so the frown she wore now made my stomach flip.

“Yes?”

“It seems that one of the men unloading the wine was careless and dropped a crate. It’s a total loss.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to curse or panic. Instead, I winced and let her go on.

“Under normal circumstances, we would replace the crate completely at no extra charge and add an additional bottle for any inconvenience.”

That didn’t sound good for me at all.

“Unfortunately, those were our last bottles of that particular wine. The vineyard that made them no longer exists, something that you should have been told at the time of your order.”